Wednesday, November 02, 2011

This afternoon I was playing with the plugin trials that I wrote about in my last post and I wondered what would happen if I used one of the resulting B&W images in one of my reverse grisaille creations. The answer is above. I used the NIK Silver Efex version with the border. I dropped the opacity of the B&W layer to 80% which necessitated a third layer to return the outer part of the border to opaque white (new layer>select using all layers>fill). I finished with just a small amount of dodging and burning. It worked particularly well with the sky and added an overall crispness that was missing in the original image.

3 comments:

I've been reading your blog for a while now and appreciate the pictures from the Adirondacks. I spent a number of summers in that part of NY and your pictures bring back some good memories. I found out that the ship you pictured here is wintering not very far from me at Mystic Seaport. I'm a member there, and the next time I visit, I'll have to take some pictures. Thanks for sharing.

Er... if I may - this is more from an artistic point of view : I much prefer the photos below; they are not as sharp but there's much more atmosphere in them. I quite like atmospheres rather than accuracy. I 'm also sensitive to the pencil-like latest pictures (December 20th I think). I appreciate quite a number of your views on ART (Dec. 21st). I was just wondering about SINCERITY in poetry. Just the way you argue about the balance between fortuitousness and control. The same in painting and writing. Of course. Have a nice Xmas-whatever-else-it-may-be Time !

Monique, I make no claims at being a poet and can't really address your query about sincerity in poetry. When I was doing Raku the smoking effects at the end of the firing were largely beyond my control. The fortuitous part of photography is at the beginning part of the process, in finding the right moment for a particular subject. With digital what happens after that is mostly in my control. Maybe I've just become more of a control freak since getting into digital because the ability to control is there. OTOH I've always had an internal conflict over control vs chance in the creative process. In the end I go with what feels like it works.

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About Me

If I'm to be pigeon-holed as anything I'd have to say "I'm a photographer". I didn't make my living that way (retired from a civil service job in the Dept. of Labor) but photography is the thing I have done the longest (59 years and counting) and most passionately. My degree is in fine art ceramics and I continue to have an interest in art and crafts. On a political scale I'm in the same neighborhood with Mahatma Gandhi according to politicalcompass.org but mostly politics annoy me. It seems to be about pushing your views on others. I wish we could find a way to live without politics. I am a student of religion but not a church-goer. I like being out in nature either hiking or in my canoe.
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About the photos: They are all copyrighted. If you click them (most of them anyway) you will open a window with a larger version. If you want to capture it and use it on your computer desktop, that's okay but any other use, posting to other websites, etc. without express permission from me is prohibited. If you wish to share them with others, please give them the URL so that they can look at them here.